Category Archives: Clematis

Clematis vitacella

As I get ready for another summertime presentation on Clematis, I am struck by how much I rely on the smaller species, specifically the vitacellas, to carry me through the gardening year. Yes, those massive blooms from the large flowered hybrids sure are showy, but they come and they go and this year especially , given our cold wet spring and the amount of wilt they have suffered here, they have mostly been on the “go” side of that equation.

Not the vitacellas though. They are , as always keeping up their end of the bragain, in which I devote space, time, water and fertilizer to any given plant, and  said given plant gives me pretty flowers in return.

Clematis vitacella originated in the area of the world that is modern Italy, and if you think in that vein, it is so much fun to say… try it …..see? Pronunciation and fake italian accent aside, they are one of the easiest and floriforous clematis around. I have vitacella cultivars here that bloom up to 16 weeks non-stop! AND as far as pruning, they all get cut back hard to about 12 inches in late winter or early spring, and many of them will self prune ( meaning you will go out pruners in hand only to find the stems all broken off at just the right level….amazing!) Immediately they spring into action putting up inches and inches of growth before your very eyes, and start blomming and keep blooming until you are tired just looking at them.

The flowers are on the smaller side and are for the most part bell shaped, but the sheer volume of them makes up for that.

They also do not get wilt, and sport clean beautiful foliage all season long. they are everything I ask for in a plant.

In The Burrow I grow Alba Luxurians, Betty Corning, Purpurea plena elegans, Polish Spirit, Kermesina, Huldine, Etoille Violette, and Venosa Vilocea, but have plans to add many more.

Some of the other cultivars are Mdme. Julia Correvon, Flora Plena, Minuet, Emilia Plater, Black Prince, Abundance, I am Lady Q, Little Nell,Royal Velours, and Blue Angel.

I do not add videos of my own making here as a general rule , I have tried and am just not really great at making them, but I will share this link with you Vitacella Video. It is , of course, from Gardeners World in England and highlights a number of the cultivars I have listed. The woman in the video has a lovely british accent( which my son CJ says I should adopt so I will instantly sound  like a highly repected clematis speaker), and my love of hearing british people speak enables me to forgive her for saying clem-A-tis which is wrong no matter what your accent.

If people tell me they have no luck with clematis, I always tell them to plant a vitacella. If people ask me what clematis to try in the shade I also reccomend a vitacella. If people want an easy carefree plant ,a  vitacella. A long bloomer for your border? A vitacella. Get it????

Good….now plant it!

P>S if you attended my presentation at Elm Bank tonight I brought two patio clematis, flueri and cezanne and called them by each others names when I sent them around ……. mea culpa…..flueri is dark reddish purple and the light lilac-y colored on was cezzanne

 

Clematis for GBBD

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is always so dfficult from May through September, there is sooo very much in bloom and it is hard to focus with a  riot of color screaming at you from all angles. So Instead of a garden overview today I will zoom in on one plant genus….clematis ( big surprise there,huh?)

There are clematis blooming here from late April through Ooctober, even though I keep bloom charts so I have a general idea of who blooms when, the plants have their own ideas based on weather, rabbit pruning and lord knows what else so it is always  an adventure to go out and see who is blooming.

I also  have a speaking  engagement this week so I went out to cut some flowers to bring as” show and tell “,and the variety is kind of surprising.

For the large flowered hybrids that bloom early and then bloom again later in the summer, this is the end (ish) of their first bloom.

Elsa Spath, always a beauty with flowers up to 8 inches across, is looking beautiful in the several locations she is planted. I adore the way this clematis goes through so many color changes from bloom open to shatter, starting dark purple, then sporting red streaks opening to a lovely purple with darker bars which then fade to silver as the bloom ages. Spectacular!

Some of my clematis that bloom early and then again late in the season  ( those labeled pruning group 2) have missed their first bloom, suffering from rabbit damage, but now look full and will hopefully put on a great show come Aug/Sept.

Snow Queen (in top photo the first one on the left) , Dr. Ruppel (below), and Ville de Lyon (below),  all are in full bloom, as are c.’Rosemoor’ ‘Niobe’  and ‘Ruutel’ ( although I did not venture out today to take their photo, they are all in the group shot above 🙂  )

Josephine will bloom as a double for some time, then the outer peatals will drop and the little puff at the center will remain This bloom is starting to do just that. It is a very cool clematis.

A surprise bloomer   is Jan Pawel II who should not even start to bloom until late summer but has been going for 3 weeks now.Look at the size of that flower!

The biggest surprise is that Bill McKenzie, ( orientalis group) and one of the very last to bloom in fall, was sporting this singular bloom yesterday. Mother Nature gives us no absolutes kids!

Many small flowered clematis always add great interest to the garden in June.

C. vitacella Betty Corning with its little lilac nodding bells,blooms here for 16+ weeks and adorns a number of shrubs ( viburnums, willows, and roses) . The other nodding bell in the group photo is an herbaceaous clematis c.integrifolia “Rosa’ that grows in front of Dr. Ruppel in the garden.

C. vitacella ‘Kermesina’ sports red recurved bell shaped blooms and  grows into a pussy willow bush that would otherwise be dull and boring right now

and C. texensis ‘Gravetye Beauty’ grows up an arbor on both sides through a similarly colored rose to great effect.

With all this bloom going on, it would be a sin not to cut lots and lots of flowers for arrangements for both the house and to give away when we attend summer parties. Clematis makes as suberb cut flower, outlasting just about any other bloom you put in the vase with it. Some have longer stems than others  making it easier to use them in floral arrangements, but the ones that either have short stems or twist and turn alot can be displayed very effectively  floating in a shallow bowl.

Here is c.’Huldine’ which holds its flowers aloft  and away from the leaves .

Because of that attribute it looks great with the rose it grows through in the garden  and is easy to use in arrangements.

Head over to May Dreams Gardens and our host Carol to see what she has going on and then visit the other Garden Bloogers links to see what is going on all over  our country and a few others besides!

Happy Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!

 

 

 

Happy Spring….Get Ready for Autumn

Happy Spring! So how should we celebrate the vernal equinox here in The Burrow???? hmmmm, I know….Let’s plan for autumn!

All too often I hear  gardeners( and the general public too ) complain that late summer and fall  hold in store  a sad garden that is past its prime , brown and dull. Well that is just poor planning my friend. And when, do you ask ,is the right time to gear up for August and September? Why, it’s March of course!

Right now you should be assesing any downtime you may have had last fall and looking through nursery lists and of course shopping  for plants to fill the voids.

In late springtime , when the soil is drier and workable, it will be the time to plant out all the lovely perennials that will make your fall garden an absolute joy…and you need to be prepared!

Luecanthemum species, or mums as we call them are the obvious first choice, BUT most nurseries will only sell  them in the fall, when they are in bloom, and when they will likely not survive transplanting. They also sell varieties that are not winter hardy here in the North East  and are doomed to death at hard frost.

The trick, my gardening friends, is to order them direct from a grower or catalogue , and plant them now giving them time to establish before winter. The great thing is that almost all of them….though planted as teeny tiny starts….will grow and bloom within their first year, causing excited utterances upon viewing in September. Faribault Growers in Minnesota has quite a lovely selection, and extremely reasonable prices, and the plants arrive healthy and every single one of them I have ordered and planted in spring has bloomed that fall and overwintered just fine. An added  bonus is that Faribault  gives in their catalogue description the expected weeks of bloom for each plant so you can order several  varieties to have blooming over many weeks. How great is that?

Lest you think I am abandoning my  favorite plant, now is the time you should also be scooping up as many clematis plants as you can afford to add lots of color to the fall garden.Plant them to grow through lilacs,  forsythia, hydrangeas, once blooming roses, hollies……really just about any shrub for a much needed infusion of drama on your green blobs shrubs in August and September. Here is a partial list of who was blooming in my garden late last year…..

Comtesse de Bouchard

 

Elsa Spaeth

Pope John Paul II

sweet autumn (terniflora)

vitacella ‘Betty Corning’

texensis ‘Gravetye Beauty’

 

 

.                                                                     .                                                                                           ‘Dr. Ruppel’

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tanquitica’Bill McKenzie’ and two herbaceuos species, joiniana’Mrs Robert Brydon’ , and integrifolia ‘Rosea’ ( all with no photos , guess I got lazy)

Not bad for a dull fall garden huh?

Don’t forget roses either. Spring is the only time to order and plant bare root roses and last year I had  lots that carried the garden right into late October .The latest were the knockouts- double pink and red, the drift roses both’sweet’ and ‘pink’, the polyantha “The Fairy” and  the magic carpet roses

Ending right before them were the David Austin’Christopher Marlowe’, ‘Carefree Spirit’, Easy Elegance “Yellow Brick Road’, “Seafoam’ and climbers “New Dawn’ and “Iceberg”…who says roses are only for June???

Other easy to grow plants for late summer/fall are caryopteris or blue mist shrub which has many new variegated and yellow leaved cultivars, the new cultivars of Hibiscus (Rose of Sharon) many of which are sterile  so no seeding issues, late season hydrangeas like h.paniculata ‘Limelight’ and it’s new dwarf cousin ‘Little Lime’ , turtle head or chelone galabra, tricyrtis or toad lillies, and Naked Ladies or lycoris squamigera.

One plant I pot up now and play the ” indoors-outdoors game”, ( which is when you lug pots inside the house when cold or frost threatens and leave them outside on sunny warm days, and is only fun for spying neighbors who get a kick out of your wackiness), is dahlias. This plant is waaaay underated for the long season of bloom it can give you. Started indoors and easier than any seed you will ever grow, the dahlia tubers sprout quickly and grow very fast and are blooming quite early on here and last until several frosts finally  kick them down. Wether or not you overwinter the tubers inside, they are still a bargain for the amount of blooms per plant per season and great for cutting and arranging.

Those are my faves….do you have any I need to add?

Let’s  get planning!  Spring is here!

 

Clematis and Roses

Now-ish is the time to attempt to get out in the garden to start some chores. I know I am chomping at the bit to get cracking out there, and I will begin , as always with my two BFF plants, clematis and roses. About 4 weeks before last frost date (or after) is a good time to get out the pruning shears . If you pruned either plant  in the fall and were lucky to have them survive the winter unscathed, think of that pruning mistake  in the same way you think of the time you stole a stop sign back in high school. No one got hurt, no one got caught, it was reckless and you were young and foolish , and you will never do it again. EVER.

As far as the clematis plants go, I will cut back all my vitacellas, my ternifloras (Sweet autumn) and late blooming large flowered hybrids to about 12 inches from the ground.

Often mother nature has done it for me and the vines are snapped off just where they need to be……. like magic!

Any of the others will get pruned if there are any dead areas, or if they need to be re-trained after having gone on a wayward path. (If only my mother could have done this to me back in my aforementioned high school days, she probably would have more of her sanity left)

As for the roses, there is a lot of literature regarding pruning. I like things to be simple, so here is what I do. Any dead or diseased canes get pruned out (that is a given with any plant). Then if they are bushy types (like the polyanthas) or shrub roses I will prune them back a little , tidy them up, and thin them if air circulation looks impeded. Climbers do not get pruned at all, unless they need serious retraining as you loose all that great height you have gained if you cut them.

If you are pruning hybrid teas or hybrid perpetuals, get out a book because they need pruning that involves angled cuts in specific places and many other directions I find too fussy. I only grow roses that fall in the “pruning 101” category and also require no spraying , extra watering, or winter protection. If you are easy, this is the home for you.

The very best thing about roses and clematis, is growing them together. Like oreos and milk, cheese and crackers, spaghetti and meatballs  they complement each other as well as bring out the best in each other. Some would say like a great marriage, but I will stick with the food analogies, I like food  😉

I have heard complaints of having to disentangle  clematis vines  from thorny climbing roses after cutting them back in the spring , and I agree that is a painful job. The solution is to inter-plant your climbing roses with only clematis that fall into the  group 2 pruning category, or in my system the light prunes  http://www.gardenintheburrow.com/?page_id=608). These clematis never have to be pruned at all ( but can be lightly pruned after first flush of bloom if you want) and once planted with a climbing rose the two can be left to their own devices until the end of time. When picking your rose/clem combination choose a color combination that pleases you and match the final height of the vines. Many of the new introductions of Group 2 clematis are shorter in response to the great demand for smaller vines for container planting, so older varieties may be better suited for growing up a rose.

 I grow many group 3, or hard prunes, with roses and do not mind separating them out in the spring ,as garden chores go it is light work,just a little thorny. But whatever clematis you choose I am certain you will be very pleased with it.

out my kitchen window

Bloom Day

One more time I missed bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens  ..  maydreamsgardens.com  ……and you all know how I hate to be left out of anything :)…..so better late than never, and this post will remind me next month on the 15th to get my a** in gear.

I could list all the plants that are blooming here, but they mimic the lists already on other sites, so instead on bloom day I will stick to clematis (and or other vines as the mood strikes me).

c.Dr. Ruppel

c.’ Dr. Ruppel’ is planted twice in the same bed, once to grow into a Rose of Sharon, once in a container. It is blooming in the container right now

Elsa Spath

c.’Elsa Spath’ is in her second, and smaller flush of blooms for the summer

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c.viticella’ Kermesina’ is blooming with abandon, but will be moved to a better more visisble location when it is finished (can’t seem to find the picture….hmmmmm

c.’Comtesse de Bouchard’ (right) just keeps on keepin on as does c. viticella ‘Betty Corning ‘ (left)(both in week 16 of bloom)

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c.’Huldine’ (left)is blooming out front although it finished out back two weeks ago, and c.texensis’ Gravetye Beauty'(right) is doing what is does best..being beautiful! What a job to have, huh?

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Last but certainly not least, the herbaceous c.integrifolia ‘Rosea’ (below) is blooming all around the ever so beautiful Christopher Marlowe rose I am infatuated with since it’s arrival from David Austin roses this spring. 

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Because of the bunny issues here ,I will not swear here even though I wanna, some clematis have been blooming out of their ordinary time, so almost every day I am surprised to see a new one with buds and look forward (now that they are all caged off grrrrrrr) to see who comes out next.

Romping Throught the Garden

LOVE LOVE LOVE a vine… easy to grow, high impact plants that they are I think every garden should have many. Although “up” in generally the direction that comes to mind when speaking of vines, over, under, through and in-between  are even nicer sometimes.Take  clematis for instance,  the most underused plant in the whole entire garden world. It is stunning growing on a trellis or arbor, but even better for the surprise factor and interest when you let it just romp through the garden.

I don’t have all day to go into the specifics or pruning groups etc , ( I will, just not today 😉 ) so just pick any clematis vine that  is labeled as pruning group 3. The vines in this group are the ones you cut back to the ground every spring. If you pick a 2 or God forbid a 1 don’t come back here crabbing about the mess you made.

Now plant the clem like you would any shorter  perennial, so that means not UNDER a shrub, or BEHIND the tall back of the border plants, but nearer to the front or middle  of the bed .

I will pause to add one important clematis direction that is very valuable for many reasons  ( again with the time so trust me and wait for later postings specifically on growing clematis)  plant it deeply….again… plant it deeply. Crown at least two inches below soil line

Back to the romp. After it settles in to it’s new home it will happily grow  and twine around any perennial or shrub and it’s vines are pretty delicate so it will not hurt anyone or crowd them out. You will be blessed with an extra set of blooms popping up in and around plants that if they are blooming will have a new companion  (hopefully in a well thought out color combination), and if they are already past will take on new life.

Visitors will be in awe of your gardening skill and you will be seen as a  “garden goddess” (or god).

Now. if you generally clean up your gardens in the fall, you will need to practice some restraint and patience here. Clematis should not be cut back until the late winter/early spring. If you cut it back in the fall there is a chance that it will throw out some new growth and if it does the winter temperatures will kill it. So after sitting on your hands all winter, go out in the early spring and cut it back to about 12 inches or so and pull all the vines out as well as any other plant material left from other perennials. Then let it romp all over again.

This is Josephine, one of the first clematis I ever planted . She is free and easy all over the side bed. She goes in and out artemesia,tickseed, and blanket flower, into a variegated dogwood, and up into a container plant (of petunias) that is on a plant stand next to the dogwood.

up and into the container

This is ‘Huldine’ he is mainly grown up a rose arbor, but I place side shoots into the garden next door and let him scramble

Huldine in the garden

 

and   ‘Betty Corning ‘ who grows through a viburnum  giving it another season of interest

For a tiny bit of clarification, Josephine is a pruning group 2. I wanted her to go through the variegated dogwood, and love her there, so I deal with her wanton meanderings by gently cutting out the perennials she twines around without cutting her. Delicate time consuming work. As I said, use a group 3.

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Cheryl